Archive for January, 2014

There is a story in Sunday’s podcast called Poetry, Painting, And Passion. I really wish you’d listen to it, and explain to me why some women put guys in that situation. No kidding. I have no idea why anybody would do that to somebody they cared about.

Big Louie is the Chief Mustard Cutter of the Louie Louie Generation. He has “sayings.” Here’s one from next Sunday’s podcast:

“Stop being so scared of the future. It’s just as shaky as you are. Roll the dice. The less you risk the more you lose if you win.”

We ( you and me ) are the brand new Louie Louie Generation. We’re not Pimple People sticking nails through our tongues, nor Dreary Drones droning along through life. We plan on being alive the day we die. That’s what my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot is all about.

This “Wonder Wench Writes” is a little late, because I have just calmed her down enough to stop doing the wave, so she could make these comments about the current podcast:

Louie Louie Lasses – United !! Sounds like a soccer team … but just ask Lolo (think US Olympic team), and she will tell you … WE CAN DO IT ALL

The problem, of course, is that NO man has an excess of hu-mili-tey …

Never tell me I’m “too good” for you? But I thought you understood … I HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN THAT. Louie Louie Lasses are smarter than the average bear and fortunately for all concerned, it doesn’t matter … oh, and I opened another jar for you …

Looks like we’ll have to start a new campaign. “M.A.N.S.” “Men Are Not Slobs.” We just don’t sweat the small stuff. Like sweat. We have a deep understanding and a thorough appreciation for the human condition. We know for example, that a person’s immune system needs to be active. “Use it or lose it.” That’s why we sometimes skip showering…for a month or so…to give our immune system some exercise. Often, people who are not guys mis-understand our motives. We need our immune systems to stay healthy so we can stay strong and alert to more effectively protect our women. We love taking showers. Who doesn’t. But sometimes we deprive ourselves of this pleasure to keep our women safe. And what reward do we get for this manly display of heroism? None ! Shameful. (Notice please that the word is HE-roism.)

And sometimes when we notice that our woman is taking a shower, we take the awful chance of letting our immune systems deteriorate by stepping into the shower with her to keep her from slipping on the soap. Nothing worse than slipping on the soap. You would be shocked to learn how often that gets us an elbow to the solar plexus and totally un-ladylike and un-fair accusations suggesting that we have in mind some sinister and tawdry motivation having to do with fleshly pleasures. See ? We can’t win. But we soldier on as we always have, having nothing but our women’s best interests foremost in our minds. And hands. And such.

Another mis-guided missive from a slightly more evolved Proud Podcast Participant with a higher voice than most guys. Her name is Pat. She says,

“Men are not saints, men are slobs. My boyfriend would wear the same underwear for weeks if I didn’t pick it up off the floor and toss it in the laundry. He gives his shirts what he calls the “sniff test.” If he doesn’t gag when he sniffs under the arm, he puts it on. He will use the same cup for coffee forever without washing it. Etc. etc. etc....

I’m sitting here in my big, manly, comfortable, black leather poppa chair in my living room, and I’m a whole lot better than I was last week when even with my most manly manipulation, I couldn’t open a jar, and my Lady Wonder Wench did it. She said she wiggled it. The jar lid I mean.

That obviously cut manly me to the quick. But when I mentioned it to you, most of you were very supportive. You made me feel better. A couple of days ago I stopped whining, and by this morning my tears had pretty much dried up. So I feel manly again. Ready to use a chain saw again…fly my airplane…use the tv channel changer. Ready to fight the biggest challenge men face today, excess humility.

You women have no idea of the insecurities we men face every day. What do you think we do in our private moments, in our private places…like the bathroom. Sure, we tell you we’re shaving. But we sometimes feel so excessiely humble and insecure that what we’re really doing is standing on the sink to see if our legs are too thin…using styling gel on our chest hair…breathing against the wall to check how our breath smells. Excess humility. That’s why I started the Men Are Saints campaign. I explained it in my book, Staying Happy Healthy And Hot. Turn to page 93 and read along with me. You do have a copy don’t you. Here we go:

It was on Thanksgiving night a lot of years ago that I started the “Men Are Saints” campaign on WNBC Radio. I called it the M. A. S. appeal—Men Are Saints. The idea came from remembering a special Thanksgiving while I was watching my Lady Wonder Wench and our daughter Kris, our daughter-in law Brenda, and our sister-in-law Beth scurrying around preparing dinner, while our Tall-Guy son Eric, my brother John and I were otherwise occupied, and I was struck with an actual thought. I realized that we men are seldom given credit for our sensitivity, our intelligence, and our selfless behavior. For example, here in the Northeast, Thanksgiving is usually celebrated on a cold day. So where do we men traditionally encourage our women to spend the day? Right. In the warmest room in the house—the kitchen. While we, on the other hand, in a manly display of selfless courage, throw ourselves in front of the TV screen to protect our loved ones from the terrible effects of the cathode rays that squirt out of the picture tube. And how much credit do we men get for that traditional selfsacrifice?

Right. None.

And think about this: How often have you seen a relatively innocent Louie Louie Generation guy at a raunchy bar go over to a woman he has never even met and invite her to the safety and comfort of his very own apartment to get her out of that dangerous environment? And what reward do we get? Right again. None. But we soldier on as we always have, even in the face of this shameful lack of appreciation. That’s the basis for the M.A.S. appeal. As you can imagine, the M.A.S. appeal is frequently not well received by certain people with more evolved levels of social sensitivity and mostly higher voices.

Most of you were supportive of me, and I thank you for that. Of course, there’s always the usual crabby note. This came from a proud (although mis-guided) podcast participant named Marcia. She said, “Dear Dick Summer, the biggest thing on my man’s mind is not losing his excess humility. I’ve timed my man’s mind, and once every ten seconds he thinks about sex. That’s hardly saintly.”

Ah Marcia, what you don’t understand is that it has taken millions of years of evolution to take a man’s mind off sex for those ten seconds. You may have noticed that even little boys in kindergarten are many times seen hanging around in the school yard with candy in their pockets trying to figure out which ones are the girls. It has always amazed me that with all the trials and frustrations we must endure, how we have enough strength left to grow to more than about 4’ 3” with the constant effort we must make to keep our natural drives in check.

Guys are simple. Women are mysterious. Fortunately, Louie Louie Generation guys have the wisdom of Big Louie to guide us. Louie says, “The best way to know when you have touched your woman in all the right places and in just the right way is when she does six things all at once. Smiles, purrs, writhes, falls back in love with you, figures out the true meaning of life, and says wow.”

1- How did I know that neither Senator McCain nor Senator Obama was going to steal my wallet during the 2008 election?

2- If Propa Ganda is the answer, what’s the question? 3- What’s the biggest thing Big Louie has noticed about the Supreme Court ?

Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

Big Louie says men must be careful of the effects of exceptional love making if you’re not used to it. He says after the third bout of lovemaking within two hours, you may find it difficult to bend over and touch your partner’s toes. After the fourth bout, you may forget your zip code, And any more than four times on an especially steamy or icy night, you and your partner could hydroplane into another room…or in an extreme case into the house next door

Of course, not all guys suffer from excess humility. Big Louie told me that one guy he knows is so sure of himself that he keeps a bowl of life savers on his bedside table to ease a woman’s sore throat caused by her shouting prayers to the Lord during lovemaking.

And…some guys just say it with flowers. And that worked for the guy in the story in this week’ podcast. It’s about a Louie Louie Lady who decided to help the kid behind a fast food counter get over some of his excess humility, as only a Louie Louie Lady can. So she walked right into his life…like the heroine in her romance novel. She says she “doesn’t know if it will last. But for now…it is very good.”

The story is called A Single Rose. It’s from the Night Connections Personal Audio CD. If you like it you can just keep the current podcast, or if you want a fresh copy check out the Night Connections icon on the home page.

Excess humility. Terrible. The smart guys in the white lab coats tell us that for some guys, making the first move in a romance actually burns off 35 calories. If a guy is very shy, that could shoot up there to around 235 calories or more very easily. And it doesn’t make life any easier when you push a girl’s door bell and it plays I Love A Parade. But no matter how pretty, and popular she is, Big Louie says, “No more excess humility, guys. Never tell her she is too good for you. Let it come as a surprise.”

EXCESS HUMILITY ! That’s men’s biggest challenge. Certain people who are somewhat more evolved than guys and who have higher voices may disagree. But I explained this in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot, and I’ll give the most definitive defence of my position you will ever hear in tomorrow’s podcast at www.dicksummer.com/podcast

Jim wrote: “My wife seems to have it worked out in reverse. She could throw her keys up into the air and they simply wouldn’t come down. Daily she’ll ask for my cell phone, which I can ALWAYS locate. She needs to borrow it to call HER OWN cell phone which she can’t find.”

My buddy Fred Masey hosts a terrific blog called Bananas Crackers And Nuts. Fred and I go back a lot of years, and we tend to see many things through the same slightly out of focus eyes. More and more out of focus as time goes along. I told you what my Lady Wonder Wench did to me in this week’s podcast , and Fred posted this blog at just about the same time:

All In The Touch

Along with all the other attributes that make them so desirable, persons of the feminine persuasion possess a very special touch, whether soothing the cheek of a crying infant or wiggling the stubborn lid off a jar of applesauce. It’s a genetic gift that guys just don’t get … one that’s involved with thinking and reasoning rather than with simply grunting and pulling things apart.

This gift is most likely related to the same gene that enables a woman to find the keys, glasses, pens and other objects a guy doesn’t see when he’s staring straight at them, because of the ‘kill and fetch’ bone that God stuck into his head instead … back in the apple and snake days of the original garden. While the female of the species has evolved through many centuries, men have managed to maintain pretty much the same hammer and chisel mentality.

Take, for example, our chronically clogged sink drain that continually threatened to swamp the bathroom and drown its inhabitants during a simple tooth brushing. I poured about every drain cleaner known to man down there, including a few not commercially available. I ran the hot water for ten minutes per the instructions, even tried cold. Nothing. Finally I got the plunger. Muscle! That ought to do it! I took a full masculine grip on the handle, two hands, and began to plunge. I plunged and plunged until my arms ached, then plunged some more … sucked up all sorts of black smelly stuff, even some hair and fuzz balls.

A manly grin relaxed my thinned, tightened lips as I confidently turned on the water. In the reflecting pool that was once again forming in the porcelain bowl, I could see the corners of my mouth curl slowly downward. I repeated the plunging process several times, even jiggled the stopper thingy that lives in the middle of the drain, only to watch the pooling water rise even faster than it did before I started ‘fixing’ the sink.

Now, I’ll play with electricity to nearly any extent necessary, no problem … the worst you might get is a tingle but you don’t have to mop it up. I’ll pull electrical stuff apart all day, but I refuse to play with water beyond the dabbling I’d already done. So with the announcement that we’d have to call a plumber to clean out the clogged elbow, and a thirty-two ounce swallow of male pride, I put down the plunger and surrendered.

As I was about to leave the bathroom, a small voice from the doorway that had witnessed most of this, gently said, “Do you mind if I try?” The all-knowing manly grin returned as I said, “Go ahead. Plunge your heart out!” With that I headed for the kitchen, it was Miller Time!

The cap was barely off the bottle when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet behind me. It was the little voice. “I fixed it,” Vigi said rather matter-of-factly. “You fixed … you, you fixed it?” “It’s fine” she smiled. “How, how’d you do that?” I stammered. “It’s all in the touch” my womanly woman calmly replied, as she handed me the plunger and went off to dust something. I’ll always figure I must have loosened it for her. I must have!

Some pretty special people listen to the Good Night podcasts. Here’s one from Proud Podcast Participant Big Jim:

When I was a kid, my Mom liked to make dinner & I remember one night in particular when she had made dinner after a long, hard day at work.On that evening so long ago, my Mom placed a plate of bread, jam, andextremely burned biscuits in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see ifanyone noticed! Yet all my dad did was reach for his biscuit, smile at myMom and ask me how my day was at school. I don’t remember what I told himthat night, but I do remember hearing my Mom apologize to my dad forburning the biscuits. And I’ll never forget what he said: “Honey, I loveburned biscuits.”Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if hereally liked his biscuits burned. He wrapped me in his arms and said, “Yourmom put in a long hard day at work today and she’s real tired. And besides.A burnt biscuit never hurt anyone, but harsh words do!”You know, life is full of imperfect things… and imperfect people. I’m notthe best at hardly anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries justlike everyone else.What I’ve learned over the years is that learning to accept each other’sfaults and choosing to celebrate each other’s differences, is one of themost important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lastingrelationship.

So… please pass me a biscuit. And yes, the burnt one will do just fine! .